Catch The Year Of Salamis, 480-479 BC Composed By Peter Green File
on The Year of Salamis, 480-479 BC
read this book several times over the years, While many historians tend to be rather boring writers, Green does a great job of imparting a great deal of information in an entertaining style.
Definitely one of the better books on the subject, A vividly written account and, perhaps the best on the subject, although a few more explicit maps would have been welcomed, Popular classicist Peter Green author of Alexander of Macedon,B, C. offers an engrossing narrative of the wars between the Greeks and the Persians, This is real DavidandGoliath material, with the scrappy, feuding citystates of ancient Greece fending off a much larger aggressor, The conflicts themselves are a kind of struggle for the soul of Western civilization: "On the one side, the towering, autocratic figure of the Great King on the other, the voluntary and imperfect discipline of proudly independent citizens.
" The Greeks surprisingly fare better in these encounters, and make themselves legends on the plains of MarathonGreek casualties versus,Persians, during the heroic last stand at Thermopylae, and elsewhere.
Not having any classical history in my schooling I find that Greek and Roman history very fascinating and books like this continue to peak my interest.
J'ai rarement lu un récit aussi "vivant" et "humain" sur la Grèce antique, Le destin et la réussite des petites cités grecques est époustouflante :
"On
ne peut vivre que fort peu de temps sur les hauteurs suprêmes du sacrifice, du courage et de l'idéalisme altruiste.
Ces moments de lumière illuminent l'Histoire, mais ils sont insoutenables dans la durée" dit Green
A la fois précis, érudit et plaisant, ce livre est un de ceux que j'ai préféré de ceux lu ces dix dernières années !
Great history on the Ancient Greeks
Great history on how the Greeks saved Western Civilization from the Persians.
Made me proud of my Western heritage, Highly recommend. An interesting compendium, although I can't quite tell where on the populartoacademic spectrum Green wanted to sit, He is startlingly dismissive of Persian anthropological contributions at the beginning, He also has an amusing penchant for the word "aplomb",
His last paragraph was deeply touching:
"Freedom, in the last resort, implies the privilege and right to abuse freedom, a privilege of which every Greek state availed itself liberally throughout its history.
To follow that melancholy yet inspiring story further is not, at present, my concern, As Xenophon said at the end of
his Hellenica, 'for me, then, let it suffice to have written thus far and what followed thereafter may be some other man's care'.
Let us leave the Greeks in their brief and incandescent moment of triumph over the Barbarian: a timeless instant when as at the apogee of a successful revolution all values are simple and clearcut, every human ideal achievable.
Such fragile and perfect revelations cannot long exist in time: for one day only, perhaps and yet that one day, sub specie aeternitatis, continues to irradiate and quicken our whole Western heritage, now and for ever.
" Green's brief, characterful and accessible style makes it mostly a pleasure to read, though the later chapters drag, and he offers, in places, a valuable and fascinating position on the events depicted.
The book is of frustratingly limited scholarly usefulness due to Green's refusal to properly cite, selective attitude toward evidence and his overwhelmingly opinionated perspective, but is otherwise a competent introduction to the period, if not one of the better ones for its breadth.
Take Green with a pinch of salt, or else read him in combination with or as a supplement to primary sources, I'm not totally sure that I should be writing this review because I purchased the book recently though I actually read it someyears ago as "The year of Salamis".
And I purchased this revised and updated book published infor my son who is about to engage in a couple of years of ancient history study.
Obviously the book made a big impression on me because I am basically writing this review on the basis of my recollections of the original.
. . someyears ago. I confess that I have not reread in entirety in truth, very little of the new version, However, I HAVE read the author's introduction where he describes some of the changes he has made and some of the academic criticism directed at the original version.
For example, he was accused of fictionalising his characters a bit too much and having the novelist's desire to avoid a gap in the story.
However, from my perspective that is one of the things that i really liked about the work, It runs like a story yet has fascinating facts injected, . . such as the military expert who looked over the terrain that Xerxes had to cover and looking at the water resources in Particular, estimated that the Persian army, at most, numbered about,not the.
M infantry plus about another,estimated by Herodotus,
I was just rereading the section on the Battle of Marathon and I must say, that Peter Green tells a good story, He had me captivated again,
Although the book is focused on the events in the straits of Salamis and the naval victory of Greeks over Persians, he sets the stage well.
From the victory of Marathon to the invasion by the massive Persian army and fleet and the follow up land campaigns, Green tells a fascinating tale.
He writes well, and as I said above he is a great story teller, Though apparently this is not really appreciated by the academic historian critics,
My version of the book is a bit tattered and marked I bought it second hand and i am contemplating buying a new version.
One of the things that I remembered reading someyears ago was the importance of Themistocles to the victory at Salamis, . . his insistence on building an expensive fleet of triremes, Also the luck of finding a wealth of silver at the mines in Laurium, Though to get his way with the assembly and get access to the silver and authority to build the fleet, he did not refer to a war with Persia.
. . but with a more direct threat from Aegina, . . which was cutting off trade from Piraeus,
And, of course, the famous battle at Thermopylae which Green manages to turn into something like a thrilling narrative, Certainly, it engaged me. Although the Spartan's lost the battle there, he quotes William Golding on the eventual outcome: "If you were a Persian, neither you nor Leonidas nor anyone else could force that here thirty year's time was won for shining Athens and all Greec eand for all humanity.
. A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like, He contributed to set us free",
I really like this book, And I think Green has done an excellent job of making history more than just interesting, It's made it quite fascinating, Five from me. Read for research The struggle that seeded panhellenism in the surprisingly disjunct ancient Hellenic world, described at length,
I'm a new fan of Themistocles : Excellent book about the period, A pleasure to read with a bit of life put into the story, The first part leading up to Salamis might be the best part, but i read it a long time ago and it might be that i was a bit less free in my time reading the last bit, or that the maritime strategy interested me more than the pure land campaign after Salamis at that time.
Will probably reread it in the near future, It took me a while to warm up to this book, Frankly, the subject matter isn't the most scintillating, I'm not a very visual person anyway, and I found the maps virtually useless, I had a hell of a time distinguishing between land and water, Greece and Western Turkey are a morass of islands, peninsulas, bays, isthmuses, and straits, Fortunately, there is Wikipedia, and I used it often to sort my way through the geography, I had to do a lot of backtracking and rereading to really "get it," especially the battles, The sections describing politics I grasped better, Despite all this bitching, I really did enjoy the book, The fact that it was a lot of work for me has more to do with my issues than any failing on the author's part.
A vividly written account, perhaps the best on the subject, The first book of my summer reading on the GrecoPersian wars and it was a great introduction, It starts with the creation of the Persian Empire and ends with the hints of an Athenian Empire, I am not sure how easy it is for a person who knows nothing of the conflict since the author sometimes references events that has not happen chronologically yet or been dealt with by the author.
The language is as always a bit hard when it comes to dealing with ancient/classical works since there are allot of places that don't exist anymore, names that are not so common anymore and sometimes people are mentioned just once such as in this battle X son of Y heroically did this and then never mentioned again, just a minor detail.
Peter Green also uses allot of french sentences and words which for the most part was new to me, I know allot of terms from political philosophy but most of these were completely new so be prepared to check up the meanings of these french sentences while reading.
In general I liked the book very much, it had some good maps but sometimes the maps weren't on the pages that I would have liked them to be but its just a detail.
I will definitely read Peters Greens book on Alexander the great once I get to that era of history,
.
Definitely one of the better books on the subject, A vividly written account and, perhaps the best on the subject, although a few more explicit maps would have been welcomed, Popular classicist Peter Green author of Alexander of Macedon,B, C. offers an engrossing narrative of the wars between the Greeks and the Persians, This is real DavidandGoliath material, with the scrappy, feuding citystates of ancient Greece fending off a much larger aggressor, The conflicts themselves are a kind of struggle for the soul of Western civilization: "On the one side, the towering, autocratic figure of the Great King on the other, the voluntary and imperfect discipline of proudly independent citizens.
" The Greeks surprisingly fare better in these encounters, and make themselves legends on the plains of MarathonGreek casualties versus,Persians, during the heroic last stand at Thermopylae, and elsewhere.
The GrecoPersian Wars is full of wonderful stories featuring bravery, cowardice, and treachery, Unlike so many of his fellow historians, Green understands the importance of a dramatic narrative, sometimes employing novelistic techniques to relate what happened, It's not an overstatement to say that the course of Western history might have taken a strikingly unfamiliar turn if these battles had had different outcomes.
Green is a natural storyteller, and The GrecoPersian Wars is a delight to read, even for readers who have no background or special interest in the classical world.
John J. Miller
Not having any classical history in my schooling I find that Greek and Roman history very fascinating and books like this continue to peak my interest.
J'ai rarement lu un récit aussi "vivant" et "humain" sur la Grèce antique, Le destin et la réussite des petites cités grecques est époustouflante :
"On
ne peut vivre que fort peu de temps sur les hauteurs suprêmes du sacrifice, du courage et de l'idéalisme altruiste.
Ces moments de lumière illuminent l'Histoire, mais ils sont insoutenables dans la durée" dit Green
A la fois précis, érudit et plaisant, ce livre est un de ceux que j'ai préféré de ceux lu ces dix dernières années !
Great history on the Ancient Greeks
Great history on how the Greeks saved Western Civilization from the Persians.
Made me proud of my Western heritage, Highly recommend. An interesting compendium, although I can't quite tell where on the populartoacademic spectrum Green wanted to sit, He is startlingly dismissive of Persian anthropological contributions at the beginning, He also has an amusing penchant for the word "aplomb",
His last paragraph was deeply touching:
"Freedom, in the last resort, implies the privilege and right to abuse freedom, a privilege of which every Greek state availed itself liberally throughout its history.
To follow that melancholy yet inspiring story further is not, at present, my concern, As Xenophon said at the end of
his Hellenica, 'for me, then, let it suffice to have written thus far and what followed thereafter may be some other man's care'.
Let us leave the Greeks in their brief and incandescent moment of triumph over the Barbarian: a timeless instant when as at the apogee of a successful revolution all values are simple and clearcut, every human ideal achievable.
Such fragile and perfect revelations cannot long exist in time: for one day only, perhaps and yet that one day, sub specie aeternitatis, continues to irradiate and quicken our whole Western heritage, now and for ever.
" Green's brief, characterful and accessible style makes it mostly a pleasure to read, though the later chapters drag, and he offers, in places, a valuable and fascinating position on the events depicted.
The book is of frustratingly limited scholarly usefulness due to Green's refusal to properly cite, selective attitude toward evidence and his overwhelmingly opinionated perspective, but is otherwise a competent introduction to the period, if not one of the better ones for its breadth.
Take Green with a pinch of salt, or else read him in combination with or as a supplement to primary sources, I'm not totally sure that I should be writing this review because I purchased the book recently though I actually read it someyears ago as "The year of Salamis".
And I purchased this revised and updated book published infor my son who is about to engage in a couple of years of ancient history study.
Obviously the book made a big impression on me because I am basically writing this review on the basis of my recollections of the original.
. . someyears ago. I confess that I have not reread in entirety in truth, very little of the new version, However, I HAVE read the author's introduction where he describes some of the changes he has made and some of the academic criticism directed at the original version.
For example, he was accused of fictionalising his characters a bit too much and having the novelist's desire to avoid a gap in the story.
However, from my perspective that is one of the things that i really liked about the work, It runs like a story yet has fascinating facts injected, . . such as the military expert who looked over the terrain that Xerxes had to cover and looking at the water resources in Particular, estimated that the Persian army, at most, numbered about,not the.
M infantry plus about another,estimated by Herodotus,
I was just rereading the section on the Battle of Marathon and I must say, that Peter Green tells a good story, He had me captivated again,
Although the book is focused on the events in the straits of Salamis and the naval victory of Greeks over Persians, he sets the stage well.
From the victory of Marathon to the invasion by the massive Persian army and fleet and the follow up land campaigns, Green tells a fascinating tale.
He writes well, and as I said above he is a great story teller, Though apparently this is not really appreciated by the academic historian critics,
My version of the book is a bit tattered and marked I bought it second hand and i am contemplating buying a new version.
One of the things that I remembered reading someyears ago was the importance of Themistocles to the victory at Salamis, . . his insistence on building an expensive fleet of triremes, Also the luck of finding a wealth of silver at the mines in Laurium, Though to get his way with the assembly and get access to the silver and authority to build the fleet, he did not refer to a war with Persia.
. . but with a more direct threat from Aegina, . . which was cutting off trade from Piraeus,
And, of course, the famous battle at Thermopylae which Green manages to turn into something like a thrilling narrative, Certainly, it engaged me. Although the Spartan's lost the battle there, he quotes William Golding on the eventual outcome: "If you were a Persian, neither you nor Leonidas nor anyone else could force that here thirty year's time was won for shining Athens and all Greec eand for all humanity.
. A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like, He contributed to set us free",
I really like this book, And I think Green has done an excellent job of making history more than just interesting, It's made it quite fascinating, Five from me. Read for research The struggle that seeded panhellenism in the surprisingly disjunct ancient Hellenic world, described at length,
I'm a new fan of Themistocles : Excellent book about the period, A pleasure to read with a bit of life put into the story, The first part leading up to Salamis might be the best part, but i read it a long time ago and it might be that i was a bit less free in my time reading the last bit, or that the maritime strategy interested me more than the pure land campaign after Salamis at that time.
Will probably reread it in the near future, It took me a while to warm up to this book, Frankly, the subject matter isn't the most scintillating, I'm not a very visual person anyway, and I found the maps virtually useless, I had a hell of a time distinguishing between land and water, Greece and Western Turkey are a morass of islands, peninsulas, bays, isthmuses, and straits, Fortunately, there is Wikipedia, and I used it often to sort my way through the geography, I had to do a lot of backtracking and rereading to really "get it," especially the battles, The sections describing politics I grasped better, Despite all this bitching, I really did enjoy the book, The fact that it was a lot of work for me has more to do with my issues than any failing on the author's part.
A vividly written account, perhaps the best on the subject, The first book of my summer reading on the GrecoPersian wars and it was a great introduction, It starts with the creation of the Persian Empire and ends with the hints of an Athenian Empire, I am not sure how easy it is for a person who knows nothing of the conflict since the author sometimes references events that has not happen chronologically yet or been dealt with by the author.
The language is as always a bit hard when it comes to dealing with ancient/classical works since there are allot of places that don't exist anymore, names that are not so common anymore and sometimes people are mentioned just once such as in this battle X son of Y heroically did this and then never mentioned again, just a minor detail.
Peter Green also uses allot of french sentences and words which for the most part was new to me, I know allot of terms from political philosophy but most of these were completely new so be prepared to check up the meanings of these french sentences while reading.
In general I liked the book very much, it had some good maps but sometimes the maps weren't on the pages that I would have liked them to be but its just a detail.
I will definitely read Peters Greens book on Alexander the great once I get to that era of history,
.
Peter Green